


Five Pieces of Art Bill Adama Enjoyed Analyzing and One He Helped Create

by Simply8Steps



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, It's all Innuendo, Nothing explicit, as long as you've seen the show, post-Revelations, you know what sort of angst I'm talking about here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-06 00:12:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11024523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply8Steps/pseuds/Simply8Steps
Summary: Sometimes, art can be found in places unexpected in everyday life, and all one can do is sit back and enjoy it.





	Five Pieces of Art Bill Adama Enjoyed Analyzing and One He Helped Create

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to "Revelations". Originally posted to LJ 10/23/2008.

“Has anyone ever braided your hair?”

Laura looked at him as if he had gone out of his mind… in the middle of reviewing fuel reports.

_He hadn’t been paying enough attention apparently_.

Amusement settled onto her face soon enough though. “Bill? What does that have to do with the _Gemelle Castoris_ ’s inefficiency in using Tylium fuel?”

Reaching out, before he could even stop himself, to run one calloused fingertip along a glinting strand of hair, sliding along its length, the barely-there intake of breath was the only indication of her surprise, as if this were ever to be a normal occurrence (though he wishes it were – would be). “I’m not sure, but I don’t know if I can imagine your hair tamed.” (Threads of Arachne, woven into a golden tapestry.)

“You’d be surprised.”

“I like it better free anyway.” (The loose strands of fabric, wrapping him up warm and soft… loose yarn croqueted in barely-there order.)

She smiled.

 

* * *

 

The most captivating part of Laura Roslin, physically, and to decide upon this was very difficult, was her eyes. And Bill Adama was an expert on what made Laura Roslin enchanting ( _everything_ ).

He has eyed her walking, followed her hand gestures, and brushed small touches across her lower back, her arm, her waist, (her face, her lips, _her_ ), but he found his attention constantly captured by the ever-changing shades of her eyes. Verdant. Raging. Sorrowful. Challenging. Lively. Covered.

He could spend the ages cataloguing each expression and, when he ran out of words in the human vocabulary to describe them, would take to making up his own: in a language, the gods gave men to worship with, heart and soul, one that only he could speak and she could understand.

His mother had brought him to Caprican Gallerium of Art on the outskirts of Caprica City. It was a quaint, little museum, and certainly not the most famous or largest, but it did contain some of his mother’s favorite pieces. And so, they had gone every weekend to cover one piece or another. They would stand hand-in-hand and study and imagine and make-up stories. (He misses her.) She told him the stories behind the paintings, of men drowned in passion (what work should he do, he wonders) and oil paints that never dried, that one could spend year after year of one’s life working and re-working, changing color and altering patterns.

Laura’s eyes were nature’s oil painting, and he would learn to read them, as his mother had read her paintings, each and every remaining day of their lives.

 

* * *

 

“Are you ever afraid of growing old?”

“Why, are you?”

He nuzzled the skin beneath her ear, the fabric of her headscarf gliding along his own ear. “I thought that I was already old.”

She pulled away to look at him, delicate hands tracing paths from the rough angles of his face down to the rough fabric covering his chest. “But Zeus never ages.” Her quirk of a smile had his own fingers gently tracing the lines at the corners of her eyes… the lines inking her face, tracing out every sorrow and every joy, every loss and every triumph. Sliding down to link with her own, he kissed the veins patterning the back of hands too thin.

“Maybe, but he fell in love and chose to be a mortal”

A tear traced another slender edge of time, tattooing the skin… blessing another link in fates’ chains.

“So, now you’re rewriting the scriptures?”

_Anything for you…_ He never needed to say it.

 

* * *

 

He knows her… knows her… knows her completely, but he still learns each and every time, with every touch and every movement. He can breathe her in and hold her to him tightly, and glue the map to her joys and pleasure in his mind.

It is a mosaic of scattered spots of skin… Places to which he would admit an unhealthy, but necessary [for life], obsession with. Scattered little tiles to pray with, throw down, and worship. Little patches of skin… but so much more. Each gasp and whisper earned, each giggle or smile…

It is a mental mosaic in his mind: the sensitive patch behind and below the ear where he can just exhale against and have her melt, the junction of neck to collar bone to shoulder blade where a trail of kisses will ignite both of them, the ticklish spot near her fourth rib, the curve behind her knee going up… Each exploration brings new excitement, finger trailing over each piece of stone (skin), skipping on its way…

It thrills him because it thrills her.

 

* * *

 

“Will you run with me?”

He’s startled, and confused, by her question. Peering at her over his drink he studies her drawn face. Today’s treatment was the last of this set thankfully, but the dosage had done it’s work (bones too prominent, clothes too loose, eyes too tired… a mental checklist that grieves him each time it’s completed). _But she’s still alive and still fighting…_ “Where?”

She pulls the strands of her wig behind her ear. “Anywhere… After all this is done.”

He smiles. “So first thing we do when we land on Earth… is to run? In a field or something?”

She smirks. “Barefoot.”

His eyes sweep over her features again, each one sculpted too clearly, her exhaustion and sickness too blatant to his eyes. (And yet, still so beautiful, like Pygmalion’s Galatea, except so much better. No one controls her, and she’s created herself in passions and rebirths – all fire and water and ice and _terra_.) “We’ll have to race…, and you better be prepared to lose.”

“In your dreams, Bill, in your dreams.”

 

* * *

 

Among the ruins of Earth, they find a house of worship that was miraculously intact. Decorating the ceiling was a work of massive proportions, all light, and winged figures, and haloes. Heroes permanently fixated.

It is a fresco, composition and art’s beauty one and the same: wet the plaster, spread it, and join using the correct bindings (oils, paints, seeds, hair, sounds) - _tease with finger, support with palm, and envelop in arms_. It is an indelible, permanent piece of art they are creating – _hold her, embrace her, join with her… never to let go_. One that will stand as long as they do – _the reality of Earth has yet to knock them down. They will get up and build a monument to humanity with their will and love_.


End file.
